


saved all my ribbons for thee

by TomBowline



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Gender Issues, Genderqueer James Fitzjames (1813-c.1848), Historical Dress, James In A Dress, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Other, POV Captain Francis Crozier, Period Typical Attitudes, Post-Canon, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, turn the intimacy up to 11 and break the knob off, when u are In Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:02:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26901097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TomBowline/pseuds/TomBowline
Summary: Francis helps James to dress for a special occasion.
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 7
Kudos: 44





	saved all my ribbons for thee

**Author's Note:**

> This fic owes a debt to the wonderful fic ["Latent Image"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23048962) by what_alchemy for the daguerreotype premise (which does way more with the actual photography part than I did; I basically just used it as a setup for The Inherent Intimacy Of Helping Your Lover Into Fifty Layers of Clothing).
> 
> Title from "Bird on a Wire" (specifically the version by k.d. lang), because, like, hello???
> 
> Additional content warnings in end notes.

At exactly half past eleven on one of the first truly warm days of spring, Francis reported to the second bedroom - nominally James’, it had become a repository for his feminine fashions - to assume his familiar duty as a lady’s maid. The daguerreotypist was not set to arrive until the afternoon, but the particulars of their situation (his lady’s fondness for hair switches, his own frost-touched fingers, and the propensity of each party to become distracted by the other) made the task a slow and meticulous affair, and so he made certain to be punctual. It would not do to rush through the observance of this rite; it ought to be savored.

The door stood open; Francis entered to see James clad in only drawers and chemise, glaring down at a bed blanketed by various garments of silk and cotton. His gaze turned upwards and softened somewhat when he heard Francis’ tread on the rug, but his long fingers kept up their agitated tattoo against his hipbones. With a gesture toward the bed, not signifying any particular piece, he asked, “What do you think?”

“Hm.” Francis sidled up to stand beside James. He had out his plain lavender gown, his lovely old blue-and-white stripe (the first one they had ordered for him, and still a favorite for Francis), and the new brocaded green with velvet buttons. Beneath the gowns lay more petticoats than could be reasonably expected to fit under one gown, ranging from plainer selections to ones that sported layers of lace and whitework stitching. Francis found that for once, he did have an opinion on James’ fashion decisions, but he thought he ought to get a fuller picture first. “Tell me what you’ve been thinking.”

“The lavender,” James began, inclining his head to the indicated gown, “will be handsome in the final product and not likely to blur. But I thought perhaps the blue and white would be nice since it was my first - a commemoration of how we started out with all this.” Francis nodded. “And then the green - it dearly wants somewhere to be worn. It is the sort of dress that needs attention.” James turned to Francis, who was nodding still although the action suggested more comprehension than he could admit to truly having. “Which do you think would suit best?”

Francis took a long moment to consider. He felt the weight of his gift for James where it sat in his trouser-pocket - he had bought it with the striped dress in mind, but it would (he was fairly certain) go with any of the three. The green gown had cost quite a bit, and though Francis did not know exactly what James meant by _a dress that needs attention_ , he was conscious that this was the only time in the foreseeable future that James would have the chance to wear any dress in anything approaching a public setting, or to sit for something like a portrait in his feminine attire. “You ought to wear the green,” Francis replied at length. ”You look very well in it.”

“Yes,” James agreed, nodding with a movement that still had something of agitation about it. “Quite right. Thank you.” Then ensued a brief period of chaos as he enlisted Francis’ help clearing away the superfluous mounds of fabric - _hold this, darling, would you reach that box down, no, the larger one, yes, lovely_ \- after which they were left with the two pieces of the gown, five petticoats, a modest bustle, stockings and green garters, and a back-laced corset. James slipped into the corset first - laced loosely already so that Francis would not be left fumbling with the eyelets until the new year - and turned to be laced up, arms slightly lifted and neck turned to display his aspect in a way that was perhaps somewhat frivolous but appreciated nonetheless.

“Why not use your front-busk corset?” Francis asked idly as he grappled momentarily with the ends of the laces before applying a practiced, gentle pressure to the stays, guiding James’ waist in by degrees.

James hummed, leaned his head back so that his hair tickled Francis’ nose. “The front-busk does for when I dress alone, but I don’t know why I should use it when I have such handsome hands to help me.”

Francis snorted - the only reaction to being referred to as _handsome_ that seemed reasonable to him - but still tucked his nose into the back of James’ neck to press a kiss there. A subtle and familiar perfume greeted him at James’ nape - lavender, lemon, and something else herbaceous. “You do smell nice, my dear,” he noted idly as he fixed the laces into a knot - he was often amused at this happenstance; four decades of his life spent tying ropes for the rigging of sails, all so he could be skilled in turning knots for corsets and petticoats in his retirement.

“I should hope so,” James returned, “as you were the one who anointed me.” It was true. Francis had undertaken the washing of James’ hair last night in preparation for today - had heated water to fill a basin, had massaged soap into his hair and rinsed its dark waves, had rubbed drops of a fragrant oil into his scalp by meticulous instruction. James’ hair was usually his own domain, but when he wished to dress it in a ladies’ style he let Francis attend him in this also, and Francis savored it. There was a wonderfully intimate symmetry to this cycle: Francis had made James’ hair soft and clean, soon he would curl and pin it into form, and when they retired he would let it down and brush it out for the night. Every moment Francis spent caring for James’ hair was a moment of confirmation; the sleek, strong locks he felt beneath his hands were a miracle of human resilience. Every minute he had James strong and whole in his hands drove the memories of how he had been before - his rattling breaths, his leaping heart, his matted brittle hair coming sickeningly loose as Francis wiped his brow - further from him. He looked forward to the hairdressing as a man long at sea would look forward to returning and ascertaining that his house still stood. 

But that would come later; for the moment, Francis was faced with a parade of petticoats. To his bemusement he found he knew the precise order in which they should be donned - a small glowing thing, to be so familiar with a practice which was so secret for James - first the bustle, followed by the three in plain cotton, then the stiff corded piece (an older style, but something of the sailor in James evidently preferred the cotton cording to the new horsehair crinoline), then finally the embroidered one. This was a fine dance, a gust of air and a crinkling of starched fabric as James emerged through the maw of each garment - long nimble hands and well-turned arms and elegant neck and finely-haired corseted chest - and a cinching and tying of more cords, more knots. Fold the ends into the waistband, make them invisible. Catch your lady’s eye as you tie the last knot, smile at the glimmer of approval you see there, lean up to steal a kiss. It was a dance Francis knew well, and dearer to him than any ballroom step.

After the routine waltz of the petticoats, the gown itself was always the step that threw Francis from his rhythm. This one, at least, was in two pieces, and had a buttoned fastening on the bodice rather than more laces. Still it always felt to him somewhat like handling a butterfly - his hands seemed too clumsy, too rough, too imprecise to match the task of arranging such a dear and delicate garment. And this one was as beautiful as the most exquisite insects he had seen in his travels - a deep green silk bodice with a neckline richly brocaded in gold; sleeves gathered voluminously at the wrists and long slim cuffs; a row of little green velvet-covered buttons like jewels that would run down James’ spine to the elegant dip of his back, almost invisible but for the gold loops they fastened into; a skirt of more green silk and gold edging, ruffled and flounced generously. Francis was tense for trying not to crease the silk, but managed respectably the task of sending this skirt over James’ head and fitting it to his new waist, arcanely softened by the stays and petticoats. Next was the bodice; James held his arms out obligingly, the picture of passive compliance, but could not resist the temptation of stroking his thumb and fingertips down the length of Francis’ forearm as he drew near in the course of coaxing each sleeve into its place. Francis took a moment to bend down and kiss James’ roving fingers, then guided him about with hands on silk-clad hips to see to his buttons. 

As he turned James let out a small gasp. Francis paused with his fingers at the first button, peered about: “What is it, love?”

James sighed. “I’ve only forgotten the stockings. They’re still on the bed.” Now that he said so, Francis spied them atop the bedspread: cream, with intricate patterns of vines embroidered upon the welts. One of James’ best pairs. “It’s such a bother getting them on when I’m already dressed.”

“No matter,” Francis reassured him. “Bring them along and I’ll help you with them while you’re sat down to do your hair.” 

At length, when the buttons had been seen to - there really were a great number of them, Francis thought with some degree of disquiet - James gathered stockings and garters (as well as his well-worn silk shoes, a purchase from his days in China and his first tentative step on the path to knowing himself as he did now) and led Francis into the other bedroom, _their_ bedroom, where his toilet-table sat beside Francis’ like a pair of unlikely friends. Where Francis’ table spoke of the order and scarcity that was drilled into the mind of every young sailor, James’ was - well, not quite disorderly, but dotted here and there with little sentimental curiosities; a large volume of Homer with untold quantities of blooms from Francis’ garden pressed between its pages, an ivory letter-opener that had migrated from his desk in the study along with Ned Charlewood’s latest missive, an abominable small sketch of his own visage from Francis’ only and inauspicious foray into drawing (James maintained that he could make of Francis as good an amateur artist as he himself was if only given the time; Francis could think of vastly more rewarding and less embarrassing pursuits they could put their time towards). 

Here also, arranged in a row by the mirror, was James’ grooming set: a finely wrought silver brush with a design of grape-vines and songbirds circling his monogram, a pair of worn curling tongs in an old-fashioned style, and a bone comb with teeth of two different widths and tiny jewels inlaid. It was not a matched set such as another lady or gentleman might have, but Francis thought it matched James very nicely. It was these instruments, along with the switch of dark hair and the stack of pins and curling-papers that James retrieved from a drawer after settling himself at the toilet-table, which would be Francis’ tools at his next task. 

Before James’ hair could be started in upon, Francis knelt and took the stockings from his seated lady one at a time. This was somewhat new to him: usually James would already be in stockings when Francis came to dress him (it was the indecision over the gowns, he supposed, that had stymied him this time). He knew the basic points, however; the gathering of the finely woven fabric and the easing of James’ pointed toe into the soft sheath of silk, the gentle upward pressure to tug it up his leg without snagging or pulling. The kiss he pressed to each of James’ shins was not strictly procedure, but Francis counted it as a strength of his that he was willing to go against convention when the moment called for it. 

“Why do you match them this way when nobody will know they’re there?” Another idle question as Francis busied himself with tying James’ garters. 

“I’ll know,” James frowned, blinking at Francis as if this were obvious. Then, with an arch of one brow, “And you, as well.” 

Francis gave him a wry smile as he slipped the silk shoes onto James’ feet. “Ah, of course,” he replied. Fleetingly he thought again of the evening ahead, and when he might see these stockings again, but he did not dwell - simply let it lie in the back of his mind, suffusing him with a sense of bright anticipation, as he returned to his task. 

He turned now to his lady’s hair. James had let it grow unfashionably long from the pitiful shorn state it had been reduced to upon their rescue, and now without a ribbon to bind it back it fell about his shoulders in a reckless wave. Francis still remembered the months in which it had been unrecognizably short - months full of James’ sweet face lit by the fire of a cramped little cookstove in Hudson’s Bay quarters, dressed in patched woolens and bundled in blankets, his features appearing shockingly boyish without that dandified curtain of hair once the flesh and color of health had begun returning to him. As his hair grew over the months and years that followed it seemed to Francis that James was growing too, blossoming in a way deeper than the physical. Reborn, Francis sometimes thought - into someone who felt the value of life keenly and deeply, someone who would trust Francis enough to let him into this most secret part of himself, someone who would grow his hair out in defiance of trend, someone Francis could not but love. Other times Francis believed this impression of rebirth was all internal on his part: he had simply learned James well enough to realize how much he could love him. 

In any case, the length of James’ hair made Francis’ work somewhat easier. Amongst the melange atop the table were fanned out several clippings of illustrations from ladies’ periodicals, hairstyles that would be approachable for his hair and Francis’ hands. He plucked one up from the pile and handed it to Francis for closer perusal - hair parted at the middle in front and resolving into delicate curls over the ears, the back braided and twisted into an oblong knot. “I thought to try this one, if it doesn’t seem too involved.”

“Just as Madame wishes,” Francis replied in a comically stiff impression of a venerable lady’s maid. James shot him a twitching little look in the mirror. “Good lord,” he huffed. “You are my husband, not my housekeeper. Will it suit?”

There was an edge there, Francis realized, the same one as had been evident in James’ bearing while he had fussed over the dresses. He bent to replace the clipping at such an angle as would be convenient for his reference, caught the bare space between James’ neck and shoulder as he did so, pressed his cheek alongside James’. “I can do it.” His voice was low, his eyes trained on James’ in the mirror. “And you will look well in it. As you do in all things.“

“Well you might say so.” James scoffed. The line of his neck was taut under Francis’ hand. “You would think I look well if I took to walking on my hands. I have no way of knowing what the daguerreotypist will think.”

“The—” Francis paused, frowning. “He shares our same persuasions, you said?”

“Aye, but he does not share my…” James gestured down at his skirts, kicked his feet a bit in their silk slippers. “He does not share this.”

“And you believe he will be...uncivil to you?” Francis could not imagine it. The photographer seemed the most amiable sort of man, bordering on timidity in his solicitude - and besides that, he was in no position to judge the proclivities of another. But of course, it was always possible; men were often illogical and cruel when faced with the unfamiliar. Francis was preparing to avow his willingness to abandon the endeavor and see the fellow out swiftly and forcefully if he cast so much as an ill-humored look in James’ direction when the object of his concern cut in.

“Oh, no!” James waved a hand airily and rolled his eyes - _ridiculous notion_. “A more _civil_ fellow there never was. No, it is only—” A pause while he chewed the inside of his cheek. Francis could hear his teeth clicking. “One cannot take back being seen that way, you understand.”

“I’m afraid I don’t quite,” Francis admitted. At this point a pull in his back made it necessary to move from his current stooped position, so he shifted down to sit at the stool of his own toilet-table and drew it up beside James. The sleeves of the gown were long and puffed, liable to wrinkle if Francis squeezed James’ wrist or held his hand, so he took his two littlest fingers and stroked over them in a motion he hoped would be soothing and not ridiculous. “Will you tell me?”

There was a long silence as James breathed out, jaw continuing to shift and grind, gathering his thoughts. Finally he began: “It will not surprise you to learn that when I was a midshipman I loved to be in the plays we would put on.” He said it with the air of a story: a good sign, Francis thought. He could not be so very distressed if he was collected enough to craft a tale, and the telling would calm him further. “It was a way to bond with my peers and stir up some fun for the general assembly. Some of the officers quite liked it too, I believe. I suppose it was another way of ordering us about, but I knew a lieutenant whom I would swear missed his calling as a director at the Royal Opera House.” Francis smiled then; he knew just the type, the enthusiasm and vigor they directed towards plays that would be reviewed to obliteration at any halfway-respectable theater. It was the only thing that had ever made the plays something like _fun_ for him - he was not used to be in the spotlight, as it were, and he always felt he was rather being laughed _at_ than laughed _with._ But it made sense, he thought, that James would enjoy the attention; he would not begrudge him that. James was a being who was meant to be admired.

“My favorite role,” James continued with a small pursed smile to Francis, “was the time I played a queen in a show on Malta. I’ve no idea what the thing was about now - tongue-twisting drivel, you remember how they were.” Francis inclined his head; if he closed his eyes he thought he could still see the blocks of dubiously-poetical text spiraling into unreadable runes before his eyes. “But I loved to be dressed up like that. The dress was threadbare and stained, hadn’t been laundered in an age. The stockings had holes and the jewels were all plaster and the makeup I had on itched like the devil.” James smiled. “Oh, but I was beautiful, Francis. I got to see what it would be like to _be_ beautiful. To have the young men kiss my hand and to be addressed as ‘Lady’. I pinched a broken fan out of the costume closet and fiddled with the slats until it would fold out. Fluttered it about the whole show. Smacked Dundy’s hand with it after when he set it on my hip.” 

His smile slipped a bit then, portentously; Francis tried to banish the thought of Lieutenant Le Vesconte with a hand on his lady’s hip - nothing he didn’t know already, and long ago now - and pay attention. “I enjoyed it a bit too much, I believe. There was another mid - Adenton, Robert or Roderick or something like that. He had his eyes on me the whole time, and I—” James picked absently at a spot of candle-wax on the tabletop; took up gnawing at his mouth again. Finally he seemed to recollect himself. He stared levelly at Francis with a muted plea in his gaze: _Understand this, please._ “It can be quite frightening to be looked at and truly seen. With you it never is, not since the first time— but before it was quite the order of things.”

Francis did understand. It produced a sick sort of panic to know that another had knowledge of oneself that could be ruinous. He had not led the life James had, of concealment learned as second nature - the exceptionable circumstances of his own birth had always been made plain as soon as he opened his mouth. But he had passed much time as a young sailor in attempting to cultivate a casual indifference to the handsomeness of some of his fellows, a comradely affection that fell at just the right pitch. He could ill afford to be censured on the basis of a legitimate accusation of dirtiness as well as the imposed charge of Irishness. 

“He couldn’t report me for it, Adenton - ‘enjoyed dressing as a woman overmuch’ wouldn’t have played well with command, I believe. Particularly from another mid, it would have been dismissed as petty rumormongering, trying to tear down competition. But he watched me so closely from then on. I suppose the thing of it was that he never _respected_ me again. As a sailor or a man. He would never let me into jokes, I was frozen out of conversations and all the rest. He would lift a fifty-pound munitions crate by himself rather than let me help him. It stung me terribly.” James’ mouth twisted up in a bitter little smile. “The admiration of my peers was all the currency I had and all the affirmation. Ended up demurring from the rest of the plays that season,” he sighed. 

Francis did take James’ hand then, lifted it from his skirts and pressed it between both of his own. “I am sorry, James,” he said, softly. “He sounds like a right bastard. You shouldn’t have had to miss out.”

James, it seemed, was already on a different track; he nodded vaguely, squeezed Francis’ hand, but pushed on in his speech. “I am not— I only wish I could be secure in how I am seen. I wish to be seen and not diminished for it.”

Francis caught the side of James’ face in one hand and brushed over the sharp line of his cheekbone. He focused his gaze and waited for James to do the same. “Would you like to know how I see you?”

“That is not—” James paused, took in a breath, sighed shortly. “Yes. I am sorry, yes, please.”

“To the best of my knowledge, James, and after an abominable length of time wasted - I see you as you are. To me you are James Fitzjames. You are recklessly outgoing and vexatiously charming. You are a capable sailor and you have the soul of an explorer— truly,” he added when James blew out a breath at him. “You are curious and intelligent and terribly, terribly beautiful. You are a good dancer both leading and following,” with a small sheepish smile that James returned. “You love to buy extravagant things but you _keep_ them, you care for them and make them last. You have learned distrust all your life and still you have opened your heart and your mind and your wardrobe—” Francis touched James’ cuff gently, calluses catching just slightly on the emerald silk— “to me. After all I did and said. You are infinitely patient. You are my husband and my wife, and were we at sea I would be proud to call you my Second once again. You are dear to me as nobody else has been. And I see your beauty and your competency in equal measure each time I look on you.”

James leant in and pressed his forehead firmly to Francis’. They stayed like that for a long moment, Francis charting the knit of James’ brow, before he pressed in further and kissed Francis soundly. The hand that was not in Francis’ came up to cup his cheek, stroke the fine hairs at his neck. As James sighed into his mouth, Francis felt his lady grow steadier beneath him. 

“Thank you,” James breathed when they pulled back at last. “I do love you, Francis.”

Francis nodded, _Aye, I know it._ “Do you wish to continue, love? With your hair. If you would rather we can still set a different date, or tell this fellow to forget the whole affair. I will not be put out if it will ail you to do it.”

“No,” with a quick rhythmic dance of James’ hair about his shoulders as he shook his head. “I want us to have this. I want to have this record of us, as we are.”

“Very well,” Francis agreed. He stood with a final kiss to James’ brow and held out his hand formally, in the manner of a surgeon requesting a tool. “Your hairbrush, please, Madame.”

If dressing James’ body was a dance, dressing his hair was closer to a courtship: halting, uncertain, but underpinned always by the joy of seeing something wonderful take shape. Francis felt James relax further in his hands as he ran the brush through his lady’s hair - a soft sigh, a roll of his neck, a fluttering of his lashes as the bristles swept over his scalp and calmed his chestnut locks. Once he had undone the effects of the many garments that had gone over James’ head, Francis reached for the switch and pinned it near the middle of James’ head, then employed the comb to separate his hair into sections: two shining curtains at the front, parted perfectly in the middle; three willful hanks of James’ hair mingling with the switch-hair in the back, reaching for one another and refusing to lie flat as he bound them loosely with rag-ribbons. The shorter pieces that hung about James’ neck and ears he teased out into substantial strips of hair which were likewise tied and draped to the front of his ears like the strangest of side-whiskers. These would be the last to be styled, as they had discovered that in the course of pinning and sculpting the rest of the hairstyle such delicate curls often were upset. 

In the meantime Francis turned his attention to the back. A braid was a deceptively tricky thing to make well; like tying a sheet bend between slack ropes, one had to keep a steady hand and an even pressure throughout to avoid turning it sloppy. Still, Francis had taken to it with scarcely less success than the ropes, and now he could make a respectable upturned braid at the back of James’ head with minimal unraveling. The pins were more difficult, with their arcane rhythm like a steward’s needle at a button; at times Francis felt he was disturbing James’ hair more than he was securing it. When he had poked and prodded it sufficiently to decide it would not shake loose before the day was out (having suffered only a few arch looks in the mirror from James over the course of the thing), he stepped back to survey his work. He had worried faintly that the wrapped braid, placed oblong and high on the head, would have something of the schoolmarm about it - but James looked more like a Roman noblewoman, a patrician lady whose statue they might have seen in the British Museum. Yet here he was, no marble Galatea of long ago but a human, a being of flesh and blood, who was letting Francis see his very soul. He hadn’t the words for it.

In lieu of such words, he focused on finishing the hairstyle. The front was easy enough, with only a few pins required to hold James’ hair in place about his ears. For the last pieces, the little curls, it became necessary to heat the curling-tongs; a low fire had been lit in the grate for the occasion, and the warmth of the day called for Francis to open the windows (curtains still drawn tight across them, of course) on his way to the fireplace. As he heated the tongs, he could hear the crinkle of curling-papers that told him James was wrapping each lock into order. It was just as well that James should undertake that task himself; Francis did not trust his frost-touched fingertips not to make a mess of such intricate twists and folds. But it was for him to wrap James’ hair around the heated rods of metal, to make the precision call how long it could be left there without scorching, to unwind it then with gentle guiding motions - a meditative patience took Francis in this perilous task, hands steady at the helm through an ice-field. The reward at the end was such a fine and delicate curl as Francis could never believe they had made themselves, his hand and James’ hair. They framed James’ striking face like wild meadows at either side of a road, like carved adornments on an ancient column, calling attention: _This thing, here, this face is precious._

James opened a drawer then to select jewelry, but Francis bade him stay his hand: he had his last gift still to give. “Close your eyes,” he instructed, standing close over James’ shoulder. When he had done so Francis reached into his pocket and drew out the little paper parcel. A pair of golden earrings wrought in the shape of oak-leaves and acorns lay within, and two delicate ornamental hair-pins to match. The set had caught his eye in the way that starts to happen when one becomes very familiar with another: confidently he had thought, _James would love this._ He was less certain now - doubting his own judgement as many do when it comes to the moment of the gift’s bestowal - but the thing was underway, so he proceeded. 

Careful of the curls, he bent first to James’ left ear, then to his right; found each of the twin holes in his flesh, acquired in his early days as a sailor and miraculously still open. As he guided each golden hook through its hole he placed a kiss on James’ cheek, for it was very near and he was only human. 

Once the earrings were in place he went on to the pins, stitching them into the front of James’ hair just above his ears so that they could be seen in the mirror. The effect was just as breathtaking to Francis as that of the hairstyle: he thought suddenly and powerfully of Titania, for it seemed to him that James in his green gown and golden leaves carried all the power and verdant beauty of such a lady. “You may— open your eyes,” he remembered to say, several moments later than he might have.

When James blinked his eyes open, he gave a small gasp and reached up to touch one earring with a light and wondering hand. “Francis,” he breathed, in a tone of voice that ought to be bottled and sold as a tonic. “They’re beautiful.”

“I only saw them and thought you might enjoy them,” Francis said softly - tucking his chin, mumbling his words, reflexively trying to demur from recognition as he watched James peer smilingly at his new adornments in the mirror. “What with the special occasion, and all. Thought you should have something nice.”

James tugged Francis gently down by his lapel in response and kissed him, a firm heated tender thing. “Thank you, love,” he murmured. “They really are wonderful.”

“You look—” Francis bit his tongue. He would not say _you look well_ again. As James’ hand came up to stroke his face, as James’ sparkling eyes regarded him curiously, as James’ slippered foot hooked about his ankle with a rustle of skirts, he cast about for the thought that had been so immediate a moment ago. Finally he alighted on it: “Like a queen.”

James smiled, crooked and dotted with false teeth and beautiful as the sun, and pulled him in for another kiss. 

**Author's Note:**

> additional warnings:  
> \- Francis calls James "[his] lady" in internal monologue throughout, but uses he/him for James. Those are the correct pronouns for James in this fic, but i thought i would mention in case it's a dysphoria trigger for anyone.  
> \- James discusses social dysphoria and being the target of transphobic bullying in the past (though it's not framed that way, more like that classic Because You're Different bullying)


End file.
